This is the inside cover
of the world's first
Pholus ephemeris,
as well as the first
publication of a symbol
for this Centaur.
A special thanks to
Al H. Morrison
for being my publisher,
and my friend.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF PHOLUS

One day Hercules was on the way to one of his 12 labors, the capture of a
wild boar that was wrecking havoc around Mount Erymanthus in Arcadia. This
same area was home to the tribe known as the Centaurs.

On his way to the mountain, Hercules stopped in to see a friend of his
named Pholus. Like Chiron, Pholus was an unusual centaur. Unlike the
majority, Pholus was fair, gentle and wise. Anyway, Pholus played the good
host and entertained Hercules.

For this next part of the story, I have found three different versions.
In one, Hercules is thirsty, but Pholus refuses to give him any wine, saying
it was not his, but the property of the whole Centaur tribe. Hercules,
however, has a powerful thirst, so he takes the cask, breaks it open, and
guzzles it down. A second version has Hercules talking Pholus into giving
him the wine. And in the third, Pholus plays the excellent host and offers
the wine to Hercules.

In one story, by the way, Pholus was given the wine as a present. He was
asked to resolve an argument between Dionysus (god of wine, ecstacy) and
Hephaestus (also known as Vulcan (god of the forge, metallurgical arts.)
Guess which one Pholus sided with? Well, let me give you another
hint.....Pholus' dad was often pictured as Silenus, who was almost always
pictured being drunk; Silenus was said to be the son of Pan, as well as the
tutor of Dionysus.

Anyway, from this point on the stories all agree. The smell of the wine
pervaded the area, and the whole tribe of Centaurs became intoxicated by the
smell, rushing to the scene, creating havoc, demanding their wine. Pholus
tried to calm them down. Chiron came too, and tried. But to no avail. So
Hercules began shooting at them, using poisoned arrows. The ones he didn't
kill turned and ran. But Chiron was wounded (some say in the knee, others in
the heel). Chiron was immortal, so he might have suffered pain for all
eternity, if Zeus hadn't allowed him to trade his life for Prometheus'
freedom. (That's another story.)

And Pholus tried to remove the poisoned arrow from a fellow Centaur, and
was pricked by the same arrow. Since he was not immortal, this killed him.
In some versions, Pholus tried to save the fallen centaur. In others, he
removed the arrow out of a strange fascination that so small a thing could
kill so great a beast.

There are a number of Neptunian overtones to this story. The wine, for
example. Pholus' self-sacrifice, in one version. Pholus stepping outside of
the safe and secure to investigate the unknown mystery of the arrow. Perhaps
these relate to the fact that Pholus orbits between Saturn and
Neptune....and links them up in much the same way that Chiron links Saturn
and Uranus.

We haven't had very long to study Pholus, so not much of his astrological
nature has been verified. But there does seem to be an element of
selflessness in his actions...of involving the self in something to the
point of losing the self in the process. Much more study is needed, though.

ITS ORBIT

Pholus, as it moves between perihelia and aphelia, actually crosses the
orbits of three planets, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune. Here are the most
recent of these significant dates:

DISCOVERY CHART

There may be something to be gleaned from the Pholus discovery chart, as
well. Pholus was 0 Leo 36 R in the 9th, in close quincunx to Mercury (29
Sagittarius 01), Mars (29 Sagittarius 59) and Ceres (0 Capricorn 56) in the
2nd. The quincunx IS an aspect of adjustment, and can be one of sacrifice,
even of death & transformation.

AT THE TIME OF ITS DISCOVERY

When a new body is discovered, we can learn some of its nature by looking
at what is going on in the world at that time, and Pholus is no exception.
Here are a few of these:

Apoptosis is a term you may not have heard of, unless you work in
the medical or biological fields. It is, simply, a form of programmed cell
death, and is referred to prolifically in scientific literature nowadays.
However, cell biology textbooks with copyrights PRIOR TO 1992 DO NOT
CONTAIN THE TERM in their indexes, and BEFORE 1992, the National
Institutes of Health DID NOT LIST apoptosis as an area of research
interest. Yet, suddenly, in 1992....the year of Pholus' discovery...this
term began to pop up in textbooks, as well as in research projects. In
1993 grant funding for projects whose title mentioned the word nearly
doubled over the 1992 figure, and in 1994 grant funding doubled again.

Cell death. Pholus' main myth is about the circumstances surrounding
his own death. Intriguing that when Chiron was discovered, scientists began to find out the functions of a protein called Ubiquitin, which seems to start the process of cell-death. But it was not until Pholus' discovery that the term Apoptosis burst into the medical lexicon.

Nitric oxide is a gas, primarily seen only as a toxin...until 1992.
Then, it was discovered to be an essential neurotransmitter...a
biochemical messenger that enables nerve cells to communicate with each
other. Nitric oxice was the first gas identified as a neurotransmitter;
since then, others have followed.

Toxins. Pholus died as a result of the poisons on the arrow.

Geron Corp. was founded in 1992, its purpose being to apply principles
of cell senescence to treat disorders of aging. Since its founding, it has
had several remarkable discoveries connected with something called
telomerase, a compound found very active in cancer cells but almost
non-existent in normal cells. This compound keeps the cells dividing
indefinitely, unlike normal cells which divide so many times and then
stop. This company announced, in December 1998, that placing telomerase in
normal cells enables them to replicate themselves almost indefinitely, BUT
DOES NOT CAUSE CANCER! Thus, they may have found the key to halt or slow
down aging.

Going beyond aging? Perhaps this ties into Pholus' orb, going from
Saturn out to Neptune.

When I first began studying Pholus, shortly after its discovery in 1992,
I meditated on a symbol for it, and the above glyph entered my mind. After I
had published a few articles on this new Centaur, Marianne Alexander wrote
to tell me that my symbol was remarkably similar to a particular virus known
as a T-4 Bacteriophage.....so called because it attacks bacterium by poking
a hole into one and inserting its own DNA inside.

Well, looking over pictures of T-4's, (and other viruses in the same
class), I was amazed at the similarities! Here is the outline of a typical
T-4:

More on these viruses
shortly.

What makes this connection even more intriguing are some of Marianne's
initial findings on Pholus, which she published in her book, "The Centaur
Pholus", in June 1996:

"One meaning of Pholus is viruses - AIDS, Ebola, Hepatitis, and
others not so deadly, including computer viruses. It is also poisons,
birth defects, DNA and gene research. The flip side of the coin - and
there is always a flip side - is that Pholus is prominent in the charts of
health care professionals."

Marianne, too, looked at world events at the time of Pholus' discovery.
Here are a few of the headlines she mentions:

(Her book, delineating her preliminary research, can be ordered from:
Pandora Publishing, P.O. Box 641294, Kenner, LA 70064-1294, USA. Each book
is $25.00 in the US, $29.00 in US Funds if ordered outside of the USA. Tell
her you saw mention of it here! She also has available an ephemeris for
several thousand asteroids for the year 1999. If you would like to see where
all of them will be transiting your chart during the year ahead, contact her
to find out how to order this ephemeris. You can e-mail her at: Pandorapub@msn.com)

Back to the Bacteriophage. Let's look a little more at what the real
virus looks like. Turn to this university site for several images, both
drawn and photographed:

In one of them, you can actually watch a mock-up of a T-4 attacking a
bacteria, poking through its cell wall, and plunging its DNA inside. What
happens next? The DNA disables the bacteria's DNA, sets up a little factory
to replicate itself, and eventually destroys the whole cell, sending
thousands of new T-4's out to attack other bacterium.

Marianne said that this is reminiscent of a mosquito. I can see what she
means....the way it inserts it's probe into its victim, and inserts the
chemical that will keep the wound open while it does it's drinking. And of
course the Malaria mosquito also inserts the parasite it carries.

There is also something reminiscent of how Pholus himself died...getting
jabbed by the poison on the tip of the arrow which he had removed from the
fallen Centaur.

Bacteriophage's may be a key to saving millions of lives. Scientists are
now working on genetic splicing to create viruses which do their bidding,
going to specific disease bacteria and destroying them completely. Similar
efforts are in the works to destroy cancer cells, yet not harm any other
part of the body.

POSSIBLE KEYWORDS

Robert sent me some tentative keywords for Pholus transits:

Awakening

borderline(-situations, in double sense)

scaling

the unconscious takes control

freeing, release

facing lacks, undeveloped aspects

euphoric feelings

unstable and new (sometimes dangerous)
situations, difficult to deal with

intensity, intensifier

to be spurred on

to "stumble" in new situations

Robert and Dieter published an article on Pholus in The Mountain
Astrologer. They wrote that "the discovery of Pholus marked the beginning of
important progress in the field of astronomy. It held answers to many
questions that Chiron had raised." And, "Translated into astrological terms,
this means that Chiron brings long and helpless waiting, while Pholus, on
the other hand, brings immediate progress."

Nick Campion quotes Robert as saying of Pholus that "He intensifies very
strong, brings you to your limits, raises a strong urge for growing (but
often very spontaneously and unconscious), when at the same time you feel a
lack of inner possibilities to grow in that specific area. Therefore you
live in a very unstable 'borderline' situation, where you tend to do things
impulsive (to cross the border) or you don't do anything at all, because you
feel an inner blockade."

On Amable's blog, Transneptunian Astrology, there are some interesting observations about Pholus:"Around Pholus discovery, fractal images get popularized, integrating science and art.
"Pholus has the ability to maintain alive the illusion (Neptune) and achive the necesary discipline (Saturn) to make a dream come true, like in the movies "Far and Away" (1992) or Nike's (Michael Jordan -Dream Team-) slogan "Just do it" (1992).
"Like in the movie "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" (1991), where the T-1000 can adopt the form of the people he touches, Pholus can identify with another person by empathy (Neptune) and cystallize (Saturn) in its own personality or in other individual, like John Connor teaching the T-800 to be more human in the movie "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" (1991).
"Pholus has self-control over empathy, like in the movie "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" (1977), were the main characters can keep distances (Saturn) aganist the victimism of the android C3PO (Neptune) in order to face the aims proposed.
"Pholus awakes the need to impose limits (Saturn) while investigating the paranormal energies (Neptune), like in the TV Serie "X-Files" (1992). Also, between reality and fiction, like in the movie "Basic Instinct" (1992)."

PHOLUS AND CELEBRITIES

One way to explore the meaning of a body is to explore its aspects in the charts of celebrities. If you'd like to see who has Pholus conjunct their Sun, or square their Mars, please go to www.zanestein.com/celeb.htm.